Electronic commerce, commonly known as electronic marketing, e-commerce, or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. Commerce conducted in this manner utilizes a complex web of innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, automated data collection systems, and many others. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.
A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website. Additionally, much electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.
With the continued increase in competition on the web, product, content, and service providers must strive to not only produce the best products, content, and services, but they must also compete to offer the most intuitive and fast mechanisms for providing their wares to interested consumers.